Hunger, Thirst & Love
by wickedDiSaster
Summary: He remembered the first time he pinned her to the wall of their common room she looked like a scared deer, pointlessly pleading for mercy. The memory of having the almighty, self-righteous, Gryffindor Queen at his mercy still turned him on.


****Disclaimer:** **Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

**Hunger, Thirst & Love**

**One Shot: **_**Hunger, Thirst & Love**_ by WickedDiSaster

He remembered the first time he pinned her to the wall of their common room she looked like a scared deer, pointlessly pleading for mercy. The memory alone of having the almighty, self-righteous, Gryffindor Queen at his mercy still turned him on.

If only they had not been forced to work together, or shared quarters with her for a month; maybe he would have never noticed how alluring the head girl's absurd naivety could be. The fact he was the only one who discovered what she hid under all those layers of clothes could drive him over the edge.

She couldn't look him in the eyes for a week after he caught her in the shower, and not get that mouth-watering blush on her cheeks.

Soon after that, he decided he would have her. She was a Mudblood; who cared if he decided to rob her of her innocence, he was going to get her out of his system once and for all.

He shut her half-heartened pleas with scorching kisses, and by the time he pulled the collar of her pyjama to nibble further down, she was frantically pulling at his hair and travelling her hand down his bare chest.

He took her in his bedroom, felt her first orgasm clenching around his finger. The startling revelation made him attack her mouth, swallowing her whimpers with abandon. She moaned at the sight of him licking his finger clean, and he made her taste herself in the sexiest image he had of her.

Inevitably, after that, he felt her second orgasm in his mouth with his given name whispered in her lips. He doesn't have a clear recollection of reaping her clothes to pieces, but the image of her flushed naked body perspiring, as her breasts rose with each intake of breath, will be imprinted in his memory to his last breath.

He attacked every inch of her, making her squirm underneath him in the most delectable of ways. When her glorious heat took in half his shaft and her sharp intake of breath joined the agonized groan from deep in his throat, he restrained himself with all his might from moving deeper, not to end what he knew would be the most exquisite pleasure he'd felt in his life.

He muttered a large string of profanities that could have given anyone the idea that he was the one in pain. His lust-filled eyes lifted up to find her wide-open ones, staring at him, as her teeth bit hard against her lips. The way she looked at him made him wonder if she thought he was in pain as well. Despite any grain of rational thought he could have grasped by then, he was so turned on by the sight of her blunt naivety, he couldn't help plunging in for a scorching kiss, keeping himself immobile from the waist down.

He nibbled up her neck and captured her earlobe. Feeling her shuddering sigh in his neck, he attacked her mouth, exploring her cavity as thoroughly as he wanted to explore her insides until she once again gave an involuntary movement of her pelvis that made them both moan in their throats.

Everything became frantic after that, until they lay in a heap of limbs on his bed.

The next morning, after he woke up with the movement of a body, cuddling against him, he couldn't help making the peaceful figure underneath him wake up screaming his name as he religiously licked her into insanity.

It was a proof of how deviant was his sin against her, that even after their second round in the morning, she tried to flee covered in his sheet. It only prompted a third round, quickly followed with another in the shower, where he showed her what he wanted to do to her when he stumbled with her there.

Waking up to the sight of her nude body at his side – despite his better judgement and former intentions – became his uncontrollable addiction. Watching her try to avoid him with all her might became a pastime. He loved luring her to his bed, proving stronger than her will each time. He could make her squirm in her seat with just a look, he harassed her in empty halls, whispering phrases of what he planned to do to her at every chance, sent her notes with it in every class, enjoying every second of her flustered reactions. He wasn't afraid of travelling a hand up her thigh while brewing a potion. He forced her to convince Potter to visit her another time without opening the door of their common room because he was fucking her on the other side.

Eventually, she stopped running from him – and although she couldn't stop him from rendering her flustered during classes – her resignation gave way to acceptance and an organized schedule, fitting her rendezvous with him the same way she programmed her homework and their head duties.

Draco wasn't remotely fond of the Mudblood, but when her dishevelled form appeared in their common room, crushing him in a tight grip; he felt his blood run cold. When he discovered her shaking body and her paper-white tear-stricken face, he asked in an even voice what had happened, while his eyes travelled down her torn blouse, promising murder.

He remembers each second of what happened next with devastating clarity. She ended up gagging from the sobs at the end and he remembers each heart-wrenching sound with shattering fury.

"I, I was patrolling. They, I didn't feel them coming, there, there was an Expelliarmus and then." She stifled a sob, "I was pinned to the wall, he, he was pressing against my back, had his hands all over me." She sputtered with a voice filled with nausea. "Couldn't move, couldn't see, tried to get free so he pulled me back, tore up my shirt. He, he asked the other if he, if he wanted to have me too, said, said they could rip me up at the same time, I, I couldn't take it anymore, I felt like I exploded, my magic, pushed them off, and I ran, I ran here."

Draco was forced to summon her wand because even though he desperately wanted to go find the bastards that had done this to her, she didn't let him move as much as an inch away from her. He applied several calming charms on her, and ended up accompanying her to take a bath. Each mark and cut he found in her body while doing so, renewed his rage tenfold, one worse than the other. He healed each of them, starting from the bite on her shoulder, and continuing through the bruises on her arms, her chest, her stomach, her back, her hips and her thighs; all of them with purple handprints on her skin. She had obviously given a hell of a fight, and he took a shadow of respite in confirming that her clothes and nails were covered in blood that was not her own.

Finishing the bath, he took her to her room. She didn't let him leave, and after a while of silence in which he knew she was no closer to falling asleep than when she had first crashed into his chest, she asked him to make her forget. It took only a moment for him to understand what she meant, and slowly lower his lips to hers.

That was the first time she would initiate any of their trysts, the first time Draco was tender with her, and she would remember it like the first time they made love.

She refused to leave her quarters in two days. He indulged with her the first day, and she made him promise not to tell anyone about what had happened. It infuriated him that she was only protecting her annoying friends with that decision, but she also didn't want anyone to know that she'd been attacked that way, and he refrained from giving any ideas to more Slytherins in the process.

She became increasingly attached to him after that. He couldn't help noticing that he became the only male she would let within three feet from her proximity without flinching away. She would never accept it, of course, and he stopped mentioning it after a while.

Her attachment to him had inevitable repercussions on him. As soon as he realised that he too, reacted in fury when someone approached her, he denied his growing possessiveness over her by ignoring her as much as possible. After taking refuge in him, her only other respite was their common room, where she spent the majority of her free time, so avoiding her was quite easy and she didn't pose any questions regarding his attitude, he felt that at some point she knew and supported him.

The problem started when he noticed her firing up whenever a girl flirted with him, and given the fact he spent more time out lately, the girls that annoyed his existence grew rapidly in number. He of course, lost no time in stating that she had no kind of claim over him, clarifying that what they had was nothing more than sex. She yelled at him that she was aware of this fact and more than happy to get rid of him after school, but he heard her muffled cries from her room still. He told himself that he didn't care.

Next time he spent with her, she didn't stay the night and even though she seemed powerless to avoid his advances or not incite them herself, she started avoiding him the rest of the time. Her new locations were a solitary spot in the grounds near the lake and a secluded table near the restricted section in the library.

The second time she entered the common room running in a frightened state, he had been making out with a sixth year Ravenclaw in the couch. She didn't come rushing to him that time. As soon as she caught sight of them, she went directly into their bathroom. The quantity of locking charms she used, took him two hours to disarm. He found her in the tub with part of her clothes still on, and the water had ran cold around her. She beat into his chest while he tried to collect her in his arms. In her delirium, he heard her asking him why he couldn't be hers, why did he have to be always there, why did he have to be a Pureblooded bastard, and why did she have to want him so much.

It took him a lot longer than the first time to discover what put her in that state. She had recognised the voice of her aggressors among a group of students in the library. She told him they didn't notice her, that she walked away and out of the library in silence, that she only ran after she got out, but she refused to confide their identities to him.

She started spending nights in the Gryffindor tower just to avoid him, arranging the schedules of their head duties by owl, and when the wench finally showed face in their common room, she would meet him with a sad resigned expression in her face. Their midnight rants were extinguished from their interaction, even the way she had sex with him had a bittersweet taste. While he angrily punished her for it, she doted on him with caresses that felt as though she touched him for the last time.

She waited until he fell asleep because he wouldn't let her leave before that, but he would wake up alone the next morning and wouldn't see her until classes, where he glared at her. He took revenge on her, parading his groupies in front of her, but instead of the rage he wanted to see, she'd get this deep sadness in her eyes and walk the other way.

Just before Christmas arrived, a group of Death Eaters attacked her home in Muggle London, sending the souvenirs of her parents' torture, with a note that described the pain they put them through, for bringing to the world an aberration like their daughter.

By the time Draco took the note away from her and read its contents, she was a sobbing mess, crouching under the window of his room. The wretched owl already reached the limits of the forbidden forest.

He took her back in his bed, where he kept her cradled for the rest of the night, consoling her sorrowful sobs and pain-filled cries. He promised he wouldn't let those sick, mindless murderers get a hold of her, earning the quiet reply in her lips that it would suffice if he just didn't turn in one of them.

She inevitably started blaming herself for the death of her parents, and eventually developed a profound resentment for being what she was. It was one thing for Draco to have professed such beliefs all his life and another to witness her do the same. He had – at several points on his life – thought her deserving of this misery, and now he couldn't take what it meant that this attack had finally broken her.

Whatever he used to console her at this point, was taken as a lie to ease her pain, and even though she didn't let it show, it crushed him.

The death of her parents changed her in a profound level. She stopped fearing a lot of things in life. She started taking a more serene approach towards everything, keeping herself more collected than ever before. She stopped recoiling from the touch of any male in school, stopped fearing encountering her aggressors, who even now, she refused to confide in him. Draco only knew they belonged to sixth year. She stopped avoiding his presence and their midnight rants. Her touches during their nights together became more tender still, and, dare he admit it, loving, which despite himself, ended up driving him crazier still for its pervasive bittersweet feeling.

The deep sadness he used to find in her eyes when a girl approached him now had a sad resignation covered with a painstaking encouraging smile. Having her approval and support about dating other girls, only discouraged him more. It troubled him to think of the deep level in which she'd been tore inside. It haunted him to imagine of what she could be thinking, because he was dead sure that she still loved him, and that she should still want him to herself. Not that he could admit to himself that it hurt to think she could have gotten over him, that she could have finally started to take him like the fling that their relationship was supposed to be.

They were arranging the schedule of prefects' patrols for that week when he received the letter of ultimatum from his father. If he didn't take on his responsibilities as a Malfoy, and betrothed a suited girl to start taking up his duties in the family companies by summer, he would propose him in the next initiation. He had to either get involved in the preservation of their society or procure the money for it.

He was in the middle of an incensed rant after reading it, and took no notice of her silent tears until she shocked him into silence, whispering his name. She reminded him of his promise of not becoming one of them, and left him with only one possible answer to his father's letter before she quietly slipped into her room.

The next morning he discovered she'd left for him a note with the name of Astoria Greengrass, whom, to his disbelief, accepted his short muttered proposal with shining eyes and utter happiness. He couldn't help wishing her black straight shining hair turned into brown soft curls as she smiled adoringly at him.

He later caught her staring out the window, a sad expression in her demeanour, and couldn't help handing her the note back with a whispered why in his lips. She told him it was because he deserved better, and she didn't trust him not to choose a frivolous, gold-digging tramp to share his life. He couldn't help laughing at her derision and pull her into a tight embrace at her cuteness. He asked how she knew that Greengrass would accept and she cryptically answered, "It takes one to know one." He let the comment go because she turned to him and nuzzled his collarbone, returning his embrace.

During their midnight talk that day, Draco asked her why, slightly over-assuring her that it wasn't that he felt dejected, he just wanted to know why she no longer regretted that he wouldn't be hers, asked her if she had finally accepted what they had was all they could ever have. She answered with a yes and a no, and before her three words cemented the hurt in his chest, she made clear that it wasn't that she no longer regretted that she couldn't have him. It was that she no longer regretted he'd grown up as a Pureblooded bastard, earning a chuckle and a raised eyebrow from him, encouraging to elaborate. She told him that she was glad he'd grown up that way because it was what kept him safe from her, despite the fact it was what kept him away from her as well; she was relieved he wouldn't become another casualty to carry in her conscious. She explained to him that she accepted that it was all they could have and it was for the best.

She kept telling him how sorry she was that his father was dragged into the war, and that Draco was forced to take up in his old ridiculous traditions so early in his life because of it, all the while he digested her admission, mulling over what her acceptance really meant. Later in his life he'd think of this moment as the one in which he should have realised where her perspective of the war left her.

She took relief in the knowledge of keeping him safe, and he should have known then that it only meant that she'd fight with a clearer mind during the war, because she had not renounced to fight it. He should have known she'd give everything she had for her right to life and she was preparing to give it without worrying about him.

Soon, during his public engagement in school she started rejecting his advances, started to avoid his presence, until one night in which Draco planned to finally confront her and she didn't let him by attacking his lips with furious abandon, she made love to him like never before. He didn't realise it was goodbye until he found her gone the next day, a note on her nightstand with the words, "Be safe. Love. Hermione."

A few weeks after school finished, the war started in full rage. A few months into his marriage, he accepted that he had fallen for the Mudblood.

By then, she had fallen off the edge of the planet with her two meddling sidekicks, and he spent every second of every day trying not to think about her. He started polyjuicing his whores into her, obliviating them later. None of them matched her caresses, none of their kisses tasted remotely similar, and they left him with an insatiable thirst for her.

He heard about her a few months after that, from his father no less, and only because the old man was worried about him. She had saved his progenitor's life, took him from the battlefield and nurtured him back to health during two days. His father was exceedingly worried because while he was still weak, the witch took important memories from him, memories that revolved not only around the war but around Draco, a large amount of them, from his youth, his childhood, his marriage, and everything up to their last meetings in the office.

Draco, on his part tried to gather every small detail that he could extricate from his father and promised him he'd keep an eye open from now on. Before his visit was over, Draco made his father cast an Unbreakable Vow with him, making him promise that if he ever encountered her again, or if she was ever captured by the Dark Lord, he would do everything in his power to bring her to Draco alive. His father assumed he had been personally affronted for what the Mudblood took from him and didn't ask him any questions. He felt indebted to his son for what he'd allowed to happen.

The attack on his office from the order after sustaining Death Eater attacks for over a year wasn't a surprise, it was just his luck that on the day of the attack, his wife was visiting him and he had left the office for a very important meeting. They took her as prisoner and threatened him to kill her if he kept supporting criminal attacks.

Despite he made an effort in reducing the donations his company leaked, Astoria was held captured for nearly a month. After which, he received a Floo call from St Mungos, claiming that his wife had been brought in a terrible state of health and despite the care they were providing her, they still feared for the worse. He informed them that he would be there as soon as he reached the apparition spot, his Floo connection at home did not allow people entering or leaving through it. As he rushed to the main entrance to leave, he found her in his threshold, dripping wet under the rain, his stunned silence, broken by her apology.

She told him she had just found out today and had taken his sick wife directly to the hospital. Astoria'd been injured during the assault because they didn't know she was inside, and they took her hostage for fear she would give out Order members to the Dark Lord. She apparently had no knowledge of the blackmail and apologised for it too, quickly forgetting that in telling her so, he had informed her that he was paying for the assaults against her life.

When he interrupted her apology to highlight that fact, she smiled softly, reminding him she preferred he did that a million times before he became a "sick, mindless murderer."

He thanked her for saving his father, and for what she did for Astoria. She promised him the war would soon be over and he wouldn't have to worry about them anymore before she turned to leave. He interrupted her, pulling her into his arms, nuzzling her and breathing her hair, while he asked her to promise she'd live through it instead. The fact she remained silent after his pleading made up his decision of pulling her back inside his house, turning her around to face him. She was shivering and he realised he didn't know how long she'd been under the rain.

He covered her in his cloak and informed her she needed to change, while he dragged her to his room, where he struggled with her to take off her wet clothes, until she told him exasperated that she wasn't going to wear _her_ clothes. He smiled endearingly at her glaring eyes and told her he didn't dream of it. She didn't ask how or why he kept the clothes she'd left in her dorm that night. A tight dragon skin jacket followed her cloak, and he placed her pants next to the fireplace while she got rid of her boots. He admired her figure in the dim yellow light of the fire. He admitted then that his input in ridding her of her clothes might have served an ulterior motive than she being cold.

He approached her slowly, tracing a scar with his finger that ran from her elbow to her shoulder. He pushed aside her sleeveless t-shirt to see the scar reached the middle of her back, murmuring to himself, "This is new." She nonchalantly went to retrieve his cloak, telling him that she had them everywhere now, and pointing out that that one was her most recent spoil of war.

He refrained himself from telling her that he knew. It wouldn't do to tell her that he'd seen a new scar appear in each of her Polyjuiced versions. He quickly changed his reply, asking her to tell him how he'd gotten each, pulling her back to him and softly kissing her shoulder.

His kisses cut short her story, as he turned them more passionate and surprisingly tenderer by the second. He made love to her in the couch, in the wall next to his window, on top of his desk, and in his bed, once he confessed his wife had her own dormitory.

The news of Astoria's death arrived while he made breakfast for her. She apologized while she hastily tried to leave. He begged her to stop, admitted he didn't care, he pleaded for her to stay with him a little longer. She complied, but her departure eventually arrived and left him shattered nonetheless.

It fitted the appearance of a mournful husband, and at St Mungo's, they didn't even ask why he hadn't appeared the night before as he had assured them.

The night his father brought her home in a fevered state, his world turned to pieces. It was the night Voldemort would fall, the night his father discovered his secret, while he himself fell pray of Voldemort's decaying state, as he drew magic from his Death Eaters. Draco didn't care, his father would be fine, Hermione wouldn't.

She confessed in her feverish grumbles that she volunteered herself as part of the project that was taking down Voldemort, by providing her life energy for him to be destroyed. She admitted probably no one involved would survive including Potter, but that it was the only procedure that guaranteed they'd get the job done. They would end the war.

He fell into an insane state of despair; he yelled at her while he threw things around the room, crashing most of his belongings in his breakdown, until the source of his impairment made up his mind. He left her, heading to his dungeons, and brought up the darkest spell that he knew. It bounded her to him, using exactly the same open line that was destroying her now. All he had to do was share his life energy with her. He gave a rat's arse of course that she begged him to stop, that she turned horrified eyes as he cut his wrist open, and forced her to drink his blood. In the end, he had little time to finish the spell before both of them fell into a profound comma.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to find Potter and Weasley in his room. The red head guarded the door with a bandaged arm and a clutch on the other, while Potter tried to wake him up without letting the blanket floating behind him fall. For some reason he could only use one arm, he had a bandage around his head, and the side of his face with his scar was paralysed.

"Wake up, Malfoy!" Potter growled, "We need to move now!"

They refrained from explaining anything to him as they guided him at wand point towards a Portkey. Once in their quarters he'd find out the blanket floating behind them was Hermione, who they tried to take from St Mungo's, realising she couldn't be taking further than ten feet away from him, thus rescuing him. Further inspection and questioning would confirm they all owned him their life, because the curse Draco placed on Hermione saved her life by tying her to him, but by providing her his life energy, he also provided them through her open connection during the battle. They severed the connection with Hermione as soon as they found out, since it made the interrogations much more effective; having him weakened only weakened them in return. They stopped inflicting physical damage to him too, since they couldn't severe his connection with Hermione, and after a few hours she woke up.

He heard her scream bloody murder at them before he heard the door to his cage open, felt her arms wrap around his neck muttering a string of words muffled with her tears that started with her apologies and her endless rebukes for what he had done. He buried his head in her neck with her arms still attached to the back of the chair, his eyes blindfolded as he took in her scent. It took her a minute to realise he couldn't speak either, despite the smirk he had on his face.

Once he recovered his ability to speak, he told her it was ok, when she started telling him again how he shouldn't have done it. He told her that her annoying friends wouldn't be alive either if he hadn't. The groans he heard at his statement informed him they weren't alone and he requested she took off the blindfold. It turned out not to be a blindfold after all but a jinx, as well as his tied hands. As soon as he had them free, he wrapped them around her, shutting her up with a kiss.

He did not give any other explanation, and glaring eyes followed him everywhere he went, while he merely smirked at her reproaches. He doubted she realised the way they looked to her friends, but cared too little for what they thought to enlighten her. In the end, he would hold her in his arms, burrowing deep into her scent as he felt her let go of her distressed attitude to favour slumber.

It didn't take him long to make a quick recognisance of their quarters to find the kitchen, and one day, he made two bowls of cereals with milk, and pulled two chairs from the table, inviting her to sit. He pushed the bowl towards her, and when she didn't heed his obvious request, he stated she needed to eat because she was making him sick. The glares around him turned furious while she turned apologetic eyes at him.

After nurturing her back to health, he addressed the deeper side of her problem in the solace of her room. He interrupted her fake slumber with a straight question, and after what felt like hours of uncooperative banter, she finally broke down with a distressed apology.

He was supposed to be safe, and she had managed to drag him to her peril still. She was sorry he had to sacrifice half his life energy to share it with her, and had to join his existence to hers in that way to boot.

It hurt to witness the vestiges of how much they broke her apparent still. It hurt that he knew it would be hard to make her accept that what he did, had not ruined his life but forever amended it. It hurt to accept that he might never recover the young and innocent version of her that wanted him for herself; that didn't believe him endangered just by wanting to share his life with her. It hurt to think he let it happen, that he let her be hurt to such an extent; that he had not only failed to stop it but been the one to hurt her first.

He hid his face in the deep mane of her curls and started with his professed love, and devotion for her. He apologised because he couldn't have lived without her and had therefore, bounded her to him. He apologised for making her feel that she had ruined her life when in fact she had done quite the opposite. She rocked his existence, had taught him to grow, to love, to give meaning to his life. He apologised for letting her get hurt, for hurting her himself, for being the immature bastard, too preoccupied dealing with his newfound feelings to protect her. He apologised for having belonged to the prejudiced philosophy that nurtured the "sick, mindless murderers" that made her an orphan and made her feel guilty for it. He apologised for being the reason she blamed herself in the first place, for being her shelter and her source of pain.

He took her to live on the edge of the planet, where only her friends had access to their Floo, and he doted on her every day of the week. He made sure she knew without the shadow of a doubt of how happy she made him. It wasn't until her first pregnancy that he started to see the shadow of her old self resurfacing; it wasn't until then, that she started accepting she was his reason to live and being rightfully proud of it.

He encouraged her to become a researcher, and would have sacrificed half their grounds for her work, had she not convinced him the south wing was more than enough. They went on regular trips to the muggle side of the city, and enrolled their children into a private muggle school, until they were old enough for their Wizarding Education.

When the youngest of their children was finally off the school, the oldest of the bunch graced them with their first grandchild, and she never stopped nagging the rest of her children for more from them.


End file.
